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Obamacare | The Government's Takeover of Health Care

HHS Quietly Repeals Obamacare Individual Mandate

The most transparent administration history, right? It's as if the inmates are running the asylum. The core of Obamacare is the individual mandate, which requires Americans to have insurance or pay a penalty. It's how Obamacare threatens people into purchasing insurance. Well, HHS secretly extended this rule for two years, giving Democrats some much-needed political coverage. However, the fact of the delay itself is evidence just how flawed Obamacare really is.

ObamaCare's implementers continue to roam the battlefield and shoot their own wounded, and the latest casualty is the core of the Affordable Care Act—the individual mandate. To wit, last week the Administration quietly excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance or else pay a tax penalty.

This latest political reconstruction has received zero media notice, and the Health and Human Services Department didn't think the details were worth discussing in a conference call, press materials or fact sheet. Instead, the mandate suspension was buried in an unrelated rule that was meant to preserve some health plans that don't comply with ObamaCare benefit and redistribution mandates. Our sources only noticed the change this week.

That seven-page technical bulletin includes a paragraph and footnote that casually mention that a rule in a separate December 2013 bulletin would be extended for two more years, until 2016. Lo and behold, it turns out this second rule, which was supposed to last for only a year, allows Americans whose coverage was cancelled to opt out of the mandate altogether.

In 2013, HHS decided that ObamaCare's wave of policy terminations qualified as a "hardship" that entitled people to a special type of coverage designed for people under age 30 or a mandate exemption. HHS originally defined and reserved hardship exemptions for the truly down and out such as battered women, the evicted and bankrupts.

But amid the post-rollout political backlash, last week the agency created a new category: Now all you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your plan was cancelled and that you "believe that the plan options available in the [ObamaCare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your cancelled health insurance policy" or "you consider other available policies unaffordable."

You can expect more exemptions all the way until the 2016 presidential election. Liberals know this lie is getting uncovered and their only hope is to take the attention away from it before it's too late.